Ennio Morlotti (1910-1992) - Nudo

Lithography on paper in 11 colors - Hand-signed work at the bottom right and numbered at the bottom left - cm. 50x70 - year 1991 - Limited edition - specimen that will be shipped with certificate of guarantee 83/100 - without frame - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - TNT - DHL - BRT.
Biography
Ennio Morlotti, one of the main figures of Italian and European art in the second half of the 20th century, was born in Lecco, on Lake Como, on September 21, 1910, in a family where the father was a war invalid and the mother was a schoolteacher.
After a first schooling in a boarding school, where he excelled in studies, he began in 1923 to work as an accountant in a soap factory, then until 1936 as an employee in a paint factory and a worker in a mechanical plant.
Despite the harsh living conditions of those years, he devoted himself to studying ancient art in churches and museums, also taking an interest in contemporary art, until he obtained artistic maturity from Brera as a private student.
Having left the factory, he moved to Florence and enrolled at the Academy, where, under the guidance of Felice Carena, he graduated with a thesis on Giotto, achieving the highest marks.
In 1937, thanks to the income from selling three paintings exhibited in a competition for the Lecco landscape, he made a trip to Paris where he saw original works by his beloved Cézanne and Picasso.
In 1940 he joined the Corrente group, inspired by the student magazine "Corrente di vita giovanile", directed by Ernesto Treccani, following its French expressionalist orientation, from Van Gogh to the Fauves.
In 1945 he married Anna and the following year he joined the Communist Party, which he adhered to for six months; this was a difficult year economically but fruitful culturally, as he signed the Manifesto of Realism, joined the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and held his first solo exhibition at the II Camino gallery in Milan. That year, thanks to a scholarship granted by Lionello Venturi, he could have resided in Paris for two years with Renato Birolli, but after two months he returned to Milan because he could not paint; despite this, he had already visited Picasso's studio, had met Braque, Dominguez, De Staël, Sartre and Camus.
It was then, right after the XXIV Venice Biennale (1948), where he exhibited alongside all the artists of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, that Morlotti defined his position, which, together with Birolli, separated from the 'realist' members of the group.
It was precisely in the 1950s that he produced some of the pivotal works of informal art, not only Italian but also European, surely connected to the experiences of artists such as Wols, Fautrier, De Staël, but also Pollock and De Kooning.
The Biennale hosted his works many times: in 1950, in 1952 together with the Group of Eight, in 1954 with a room presented by Giovanni Testori (destroying the works exhibited immediately after), in 1962 winning the prize (tied with Capogrossi) reserved for an Italian artist, in 1964 within the section "Art of today in museums", in 1972 with a personal room, in 1988 with another personal in the Italy pavilion and in the section dedicated to the review "The Fronte nuovo delle Arti at the 1948 Biennale".
In 1986 and 1992 he was invited to the National Quadriennale of Art in Rome.
The most important overall exhibitions of the last decade are those of 1987 in Locarno and Milan, and 1994 in Ferrara, held posthumously after his death on December 15, 1992 in Milan.